Time Flees
It’s hard for me to believe we are seven years into another century. I have two kindred now born since 2000, new centurians, leaving my century behind in the dust of its ancientness, leaving behind my century’s thinkers and inventors, writers, musicians, all that wonderful American culture that developed in the 20th Century, the rise of unionism, the rise of right thinking in terms of finally getting away from old-fashioned parental controls (19th Centry controls; though both my parents were born in the 20th Century, they were dripping from being baptized in 19th Century values, morals, and desires. As far as that goes, my new grandniece and grandnephew are going to be baptized in 20th Century values, morals, and desires, both their parents being mid-20th Century types; at least types with new ideals, ideals built upon peace in the world, a mixing of races and cultures in this country, the rising up of fairness doctrines against the still oppressive nature of the end-of-the-19th-Century way of thinking, a thinking that gave citizenship to a corporation thus giving it the same status under our Constitution as an individual citizen. That’s the bullshit 19th-Century corporate America gave us. Georgie Porgie, our phony, two-bit, criminal “president,” represents that 19th-Century was of thinking, that Industrial Revolution (started in Britain, where else?), that imperialist way of thinking, the beginning of the Fascist takeover of this country, the Repugnicans the most oppressive of the 19th-Century political parties, the Dumbocrats becoming “the party of the people” even though it was the Dumbocrats who backed slavery and States Rights. F.D.R. took advantage of that “party of the people” B.S. and he’s the guy who under his aristocratic scheming figured out that the workingclass, middle-class, public-servants of all colors were the largest voting block in this country and that if you could unite them you’d have a clear majority in an election against the elitist Repugnicans, who were by the 20th Century totally in the back pockets of the corporate zillionaires like the steel, coal, railroads, banking, oil, lumber, automotive barons and especially the back pockets of the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts—so far all of Dutch descent, old original New Amsterdam families who stole Manhattan from the friendly Manhattan Indians—and the Astors, the Carnegies, the Mellons, the Fricks (some called them the Pricks), the Harrimans, the Goulds—on and on I could go with these familiar family names whose worthless offspring we’re still supporting, like our phony “president,” Georgie Porgie, certainly the spoiled brat dopey offspring of a long line of criminal-behaving Bushes, starting with swindler Sam Bush out of the same old 19th-Century sticks of Ohio from whence came, too, old rotten John D. (Damn the people full steal ahead) Rockefeller.
I look at an X-mas card from my niece and her family and I look at them, all perfect, her husband the handsome public administrator and triathelon star, her daughter becoming more perfectly white beautiful every day—looking Hollywood bound every day, I tell you de truff—and her never looking better, all of ‘em superbly blonde and blue-eyed—the perfect family, man. It makes me kind’a sad. Why? I asked myself and it begins to reveal it’s because I’ve ended up such a failure.
My mother and father have long been dead—dying before their time, sacrificed on the highways of Texas so that an empty asphalt-hauling 18-wheeler could break the speed limit in order to get back for his next load, the faster he drives the more pick ups and hauls he can make, the boss on his ass to break the speed limit in order to get the loads to the construction sites in time—dig, it’s a part of progess. So my old man pulled out of a roadside park after taking a lunch break and BOOM, my parents were gone—just like that; in a matter of seconds, going from vibrantly alive, eating the fried chicken and drinking their Dr. Peppers in the shade of a lovely roadside park sitting at a picnic table, I can see them now—both of them loved picnicking, especially when they traveled, and they loved traveling and had in their lives driven thousands and thousands of miles around the USA every summer vacation since they were married in the 1920s and never with any problems, tickets, wrecks, etc. But that one fine summer day, in July it was, right after they’d been to New Orleans to visit with me and my new bride, their number was up…BOOM!—and a wreck like that makes a hell of an explosive noise—BOOM! and they were gone.
My only brother is gone now. He died 4 years ago of brain cancer after his life was saved by having a heart transplant and then setting the record for a heart-transplant survivor, 18 years. His first wife died right after his heart transplant of liver cancer; one of his sons just recently died in Los Angeles, a very talented painter, of a botched operation. He has two sons and a daughter still living and they are my only family left. I have no aunts or uncles and only very distant cousins still alive.
My two best friends in life are long gone. My friend the photographer died of throat cancer in 1993; and my friend from childhood, the one person who knew me intimately intellectually, died of brain cancer in 2002. Another friend who I used to hang with on a daily basis died suddenly while entering his apartment after work one day—BAM, a heart attack.
I was born as WWII started. When I was five years old, I started attending military funerals as the young men of my hometown were flown back dead from the Italian Campaign in Europe and then from the Philippine Campaign in the Pacific. I’d estimate for awhile there, I attending a military funeral at least twice a month as my brother’s high school buddies and my family’s close friend’s sons came back in those infamous body bags—and I remember one story that went around that when one mother opened up her son’s body bag, it wasn’t her son!
Then I started school as WWII ended and the Cold War with the Soviet Union began, and then there was trouble in Greece with Truman threatening to send in the Marines, and then there was the Korean War, and then the War in Viet Nam, and then Ronnie Raygun's War on Grenada, and Pappy Bush's War on Panama (500 innocent people killed in that war), and then Pappy's Gulf War (250,000 sick soldiers returned from that fiasco), and then Slick Willie's attacks on Afghanistan, rocket attack on Baghdad, and our sending the Marines into Somalia, and then here comes another Bush, this time a real pussy-whipped poor little rich boy, a phony "president," Georgie Porgie, and sure enough here comes another war, this one another war to end all wars...well, wars on terrerism, that is, except Georgie Boy says this war is nonending.So, hot damn, here we are at another one of those "peace on earth and good will toward men" times when the smell of death is thick in the air of the world and looks like these imbeciles who lead us keep on leading us deeper into the ruinous cost and mounting death tolls as the nonsense of this War on Terrerism goes on, keeps going on, and seems as though it's meant to keep going on out of my time on into your time--and oh what little time we all have left.
Gore Vidal Still Fighting
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Havana, Dec 12 (Prensa Latina) Famous US writer Gore Vidal warned Tuesday that President George W. Bush could end as did Richard Nixon, with an obligatory resignation. Vidal, 81, is visiting Cuba at the head of a large delegation of US intellectuals, historians and politicians. "We hope he will end up like Nixon, resigning the presidency," the author said in an exchange with professors and students at the University of Havana, adding "it s not impossible." Comparing the present US leader with Richard Nixon (1969-1974), who was forced to leave the White House due to the Watergate scandal, Vidal said, "When a building begins to fall to pieces it is very difficult to stop its collapse." thegrowlingmerryX-maswolf |
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